


Dance if You Dare

by vampirewithbedsidemanners



Category: Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, Tom Hiddleston RPF, hiddlestoners
Genre: Angst, F/M, I Needed To Vent, No Im not sorry, Retribution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 05:57:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3717697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampirewithbedsidemanners/pseuds/vampirewithbedsidemanners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was the one that started it all. She was the one that stopped him, froze him dead in his tracks only to walk away. 5 years have passed and he realized he cant move on until he faces it, faces everything that she walked away from. But will confronting her again dig up more scars than it helps heal?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is me, venting, for the emotional turmoil Winterheart17 put me through with her stupid Happiness? I do. Tom deserves a little heartbreak, even if he wont show it to Wednesday. The arse. Okay, enjoy. No, I do not wish any of this on Tom, I am just irrationally mad at him atm and needed to vent :)

So this was it. This is what she left me for. _It burns, still. The thought._ 5 years have passed, and her last words are still burned into my chest.

_**I will never love you.** _

I stood outside the doors to the open theater, starring in as if the courage I needed to face her again would suddenly come rushing out.

_I need to face her, see her. I need to put these thoughts behind me._

I’m frozen to the ground, unable to move until the first notes of gentle music fills the hallway.

_‘THOMAS!!!’ She giggled, clutching my hands to her sides as if that would stop me from tickling her. She curled into my chest, her whole body trembling with laughter. Her eyes met mine, her warm hazel eyes crinkled with laughter. Love._

_Music played softly in the background._

With a deep breath I stepped into the hall and slid along the back to take a seat. There were a few dozen people sitting in to watch their rehearsal, and I suddenly felt out of place. This was Donmar, where I had performed countless times, and yet, sitting here, I had the strangest feeling I didn't belong.

_**I never belonged in your life.** _

We were the casualty of youth, of first love and first mistakes. _And it burned._

The music changed and the dancers filed out on the floor. An older plump woman I recognized immediately as the director addressed the crowd. “Thank you for coming to observe this rehearsal. Our dancers are among the finest interpretive dancers in the Academy. Enjoy.” She took her bow and left.

_You did it, Core. You did it._

_Pain._ The thought send a stab of all to familiar pain through my chest. _What place did I have being proud of her? She will never love me._ I sank back in my seat, crossing my legs, trying to disappear.

_I shouldnt have come._

The music changed and the dancers flooded the floor. Six of them. But not her. I strained my eyes for her familiar, dark brown hair and hazel eyes and pale skin. My heart thrummed in my chest, each beat more painful than the last.

_This is it._

_5 years. 5 words._

After a pause she came out, fumbling around with an ipod.

**_Nothing has changed._ **

She was exactly as she had been when she walked out that night 5 years ago. Her brown hair was pulled up into a delicate bun that was far from delicate, but rather set in stone, refusing to move past the pins that, no doubt, held it in place. Her eyes were the same Hazel, full of light and life and frustration at the device in her hand. She looked the same. Every inch of her. The way she walked, the way she smiled. It was the her before that night, the night she realized that she didn't love me, the night she looked at me blankly, pitying me. The night she left.

That Cora was gone. She was happy and healthy and moving along with her life as if I...  _I was never even there._

I want to be happy, but the pain was too much. I thought this would help. My fingers dug into my knees as I fought to keep a straight, politely entertained face like the rest of the observers. She went about her business, getting everyone in line, starting the rehearsal. They talked and talked and danced and talked. The song played on repeat in the background, but I couldn't hear it anymore.

 _Can she even see me here?_ I wanted her too. I wanted her to turn around and see me sitting in the crowd and freeze the way I do every time she seeps into my thoughts. _I want to know that part of you loves me. I want to know that part of you feels something, that this isnt as clean of a break for you as you make it seem._

**_I want to know you think about me sometimes._ **

I was being irrational, and I knew it. She didn't think about me, dream about me. She didn't hold on, she walked.

_She walked and I shattered._

**_I will never love you._ **

She was so elegant in her movements. _I missed you_. For a moment, I was taken back to the nights she would taunt me, dancing just out of reach. She would twist and turn, dodging around me, using my height and weight against me as I fumbled around trying to kiss her.

_I was never a match for you._

She accomplished all she ever dreamed. She went as far as she could go and then a step further. She stole hearts with every turn, breaths with every smile. She moved with so much emotion I could feel her heart beating, even from the back of the theater.

_Perhaps that is just my memory._

And then I saw it. The look in her eyes as she met one of the dancers in the middle of the floor. The music rose around them, and she looked up into his eyes with so much adoration and love and hope.

_No._

His hands graze over her and she smiles.

_Let it go, Tom._

He lifted her up and spun her around, her feet touching down as if she were walking on a cloud.

_She hasn't been yours for a long time._

I hated it. I hated every smile, every look she cast him. Each dug up old scars that refused to heal. Each one sent a wave of pain through my chest, pain that I had grown accustomed to.

_Pain I had learned to live with. Live through._

It was easier being alone than taking another woman to bed. It was easier to push romance out of my mind, push women away, push love away, than face it.

**_I was hers. And she doesn’t want me._ **

Part of me resigned to living alone; after all what use is love when your heart is not in it?

I never let it heal, these wounds. I held onto them, held onto her. **_I held onto the love that she never wanted._**

Because for me it was real. For me she was that one that all other pale in comparison to. She was the one that stopped me dead in my tracks, that turned me away from every other woman.

_We were only 26. Only 26._

I would have married her. I would have given her the world. I would have continued to love her day in and day out. I wanted to have a family with her, a home.

_She will never love me. She never wanted any of this._

**_She never asked to be loved._ **

* * *

_5 words brought us here. 5. And now its time for 5 more._

"What are you doing here?" I ask, wary of the way he is forcing himself to watch me.  _Like its painful for him to see me now._

He doesnt know pain. Not like I know pain. 5 years. 5 years and so much has happened, so much has changed.  _I am no longer your ballerina, and you are no longer mine._

**_I fucked up. I fucked it all up._ **

 


	2. Chapter 2

**_I fucked up. I fucked it all up._ **

_His hands trail over my skin, twisting in the fabric at my waist as I pulled myself on point._

_'Extend, Coralina. Extend.' The director calls as I bend backwards, my arms gliding out. His hands settle on my hips, guiding me. We are soaring, higher and higher. The music pushes us on, together. My fingers trail along his jaw and suddenly I am no just the Black Swan and he the Prince, but I am the girl giddy with elation stareing a marvelous creature in the eyes as he sweeps me off my feet._

_The music has stopped, but I cant let go. My hands are frozen in place where they were, a second ago, caressing his face. His gaze changes as he looks down at me, his eyes clouding over, darkening._

_Beckoning._

_**I want you.**  
_

_But... Tom._

_All the late nights, staying up late waiting for Tom to come home from 'work', his work that seemed to go nowhere but small, awkward indie films and small budget theater performances, bore in on me. All the failure, all the fights._ **It was never the right time.**

 **There was never any time for us.**   _All the appeal of our love had simmered away, peeling inch by inch until all that was left were quietly decaying bones holding us up._

_Barely._

_My Prince stared down at me with all the dark promise of success, of lust and love and emotion. He promised me fire, and passion. **You are the flame and I am the moth.** **  
**_

"Thomas, Please." I say quietly, keeping my back turned to him as he stands in the doorway.  _When did you become someone I cant recognize anymore?_ I had looked him over and over during the dance. I caught his profile on every turn; his face, his body, his features. The way he sat, the way his hands gripped his thighs, the way his brow furrowed more and more with every passing glance.

_Do you see me looking?_

"Why--" I start and he clears his throat, stopping my words from falling out.

"We have... unfinished business, Coralina. Im here to rectify that." His voice was even and calm, warm even. There was no hurt, no anger, no doubt. Just resignation. 

It was so different from the words he threw at me like daggers the night I left.  **The night I fucked it all up.**  

 _'Did you EVER LOVE ME!' he screamed._ **Yes, Tom. I love you.** For a moment though, I forgot that.

When I remembered it was too late and I was standing on an alter, marrying the Prince that swept me away.  _The prince I never loved because **I love you.** You and only you. _

_It was only ever you._

"Its been a long time, I thought you had forgotten." I whisper. He can hear me, I know he can hear me. The hall is silent, the dim lights pressing in, drowning me. Its too dark. Once upon a time I would have run to him, pulling him into the room kissing him senseless. Once upon a time I would have found this romantic.  _Not now._

"I never forgot." Silence.  _WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY? I'm sorry, Tom. I'm sorry._

"You have done well for yourself, got all you wanted, your pick of roles. Im happy for you, really." I had no tears left to cry over him, they dried up years ago.  _I wouldn't cry, I wouldn't._ I turn around to meet his gaze, his gaze that tells me nothing.

 _What an actor you have become. I can't even tell if you are thinking at all._  

His face is so passive, so restrained. This is what he has become.

"You have too." He says, pride gracing his words. The broken butterflies in my chest struggle to flap their crumpled, torn wings.  **No, I haven't.**

"Tom.... I..." The dead lull between us hung with all the things that were no longer proper to say. What we had ended so long ago, I no longer knew what to say, to do. "What do you want?" 

There it is again, that pain in his eyes as he registers my words.  _Pain._

"Would you... fancy some coffee, with me?" He gets out. "Gives us time to..."

"No. No, I don't. Thomas, what is there left to say? To rectify? It ended, case closed." I brush off.  _Anything to make him leave. Please just leave._

_I dont think I could stand to see you like that._

"Why did you go?" He asks softly; no anger in his voice.  _How are you not angry at me? How can you stand her and not hate everything I am._ ** _I'm the one the fucked everything up._**

I suck in a sharp breath before meeting his eyes, his eyes that I couldn't look at before. They show nothing but polite curiosity. "Because at the time you weren't enough, we weren't enough..."

"Are you happy now?"  _So soft and gentle, your questions. It reminds me of..._

 ** _Am I happy?_  **The truth was no. The truth was I hadn't been happy in a very long time. The truth was that even before I got married to a man I didn't love I knew I wasn't happy. I knew deep down that I didn't love him the way I loved Tom. I was too stubborn to go back, I was too stubborn to make things right.  _And now its far too late._

"I guess I must be." I say.  _Are you?_ _  
_

* * *

_I'm standing on the floor, in his arms. Dancing. Twirling around with reckless abandon. His eyes look down on me, loving and gentle as he turns me around. His hands over mine, his fingers woven through mine as if to whisper 'I am never letting you go'_

_Blue eyes, blue eyes that burn with so much love. I want to hear you reciting Shakespeare in the morning. I want to hear your laugh. I want to see you smile again, smile because of me. I want **you.**_

"Cor... Cor, come on. Cor wake UP!" A voice calls to me, nudging me awake.

"What... hmm... sorry." I mumble. My heart fell as I came back to reality, this reality, my reality.  _The reality that you aren't a part of anymore._

"You were crying." My husband says and I nodd silently.

"Im sorry."

He turns away with a humph, pulling the blankets in tighter. In the dark, he cant see the tears that fall down my cheeks.

 _What am I doing?_  


End file.
